Because Spring gardening has now arrived again, activities and inner thoughts explode. Exciting stuff.

To re-experience events from the past year and a half gardening endeavours allows further inspirations. The good vibes of achieving a better looking garden are starting over. A desire for those ‘satisfaction resulting from witnessing improvements’ need to be felt again. Although it was really hard work over the last year and a half, it was actually a gentle time. Working under a sky of sunshine filled days again.

The current DIY indoor experiences have become almost over and done. A whisker kissker away. Shopping in Worcester, England over the last few days brought some art for the walls, throws for the seating, plant pots and rugs for the floors. So the little finishing touches to get comfortable in the house are being realised and now it’s time to transfer energies into the garden.

Hopes for the immediate future this year would be to realise a balance for the garden. We are lucky enough to have the lower garden space and then steps up to the ‘top garden’. Ideas do exist for both spaces. But often, due to my wife working full time, it’s myself getting on with it. Difficult at times to garner motivation when your body is saying ‘Hold on a minute! Your getting on in whisker years’.

Anyways. Firstly. The desire to provide activity with growing foods and planting more shrubs/plants/trees. Read organic and eco friendly philosophies and apply them as best we can. Encourage wildlife into the garden. Recycling ideology too.

Secondly. Create a more social provision by building areas to allow visitors to relax. A garden ideal that includes the ability to living outdoor life opportunities from the summer to winter periods. Invitations to visit and involve familiar faces from past social inclusions from long ago. Pre-Covid basically. Find ideas to put in place with new determination. Enough seating for just chilling and relaxing, evening fires in round metal containers/chiminea/baskets or a circle of stones as fire pits. Wooden framed gazebo covered with greenery to sit under and an arbour or two to sit inside.

Yesterday continued the ‘slog work’ with filling the very long and fairly deep raised bed with heavy logs. The decision was made to fill with the Hugelkultur philosophy. (There are very many good site links out there in internet land). So the logs seen here, in both the above and below photographs, were brought up from front of house to top garden. Heavy task walking up the steps carrying them though. The old Beech tree, having been cut down a few years ago, provided an appropriate hard wood log base. The left over pile of beech logs to be used for future burning in the chiminea, etc.

Hugelkultur relies on specific percentage layerings and there is much advice on the internet of what and what not to include. Luckily, the earth in our garden is dark and rich. Apples and damsons having fallen and been left have provided this outcome. Next to the raised bed is a mound of such soil from digging exertions around the garden last year. We riddled in this earth yesterday to pack in between the layer out logs. Then packed it down into the spaces to avoid gaps between the logs. We did not want either rodents nestingwithin the wood gaps or moisture from rain or self watering filtering quickly through the layers to the bottom ground base and wasted.

5% cardboard; done with a ground cover membrane pulled up the side. A foot high. 

45% logs/earth; beech wood laid cut side up/bark to side. Earth from our soil. 

10% brash and plant cuttings (much lies around the garden from shedding damson trees, fruit tree leaves, herbs and appropriate shrub leaves and cuttings. Brash also lay in the ‘dead hedge’ made last year;

10% compost material, manure. Very little available at present. Will fall through and fill brash spaces. 

30% top organic soil. Probably a mix of a few decent quality bought compost bags with our dark rich garden earth. Providing an aerated soil ideal for oxygen to get at the roots.